London

When moving into an unfamiliar city, it is nice to see how the old routines are being folded and left to dust in their drawers, and new rituals taking their places. In Dublin, the cosiest rituals included long breakfasts in Brother Hubbard and walking around the sunny city. I haven’t yet managed to find a similar source of Bircher muesli in London, but the coffees, cakes and dumplings from Herne Hill’s Sunday Market make up for this lack just splendidly!

At the beginning of the year, I had two friends from Finland visiting me. The touristy side of the journey was well planned (my librarian friend hurried to the British Library on her first morning in town), and also the nutrition side of the stay was covered from the beginning: a breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner – whatever! – as long as it was in Ottolenghi’s establishment. The table had been booked for Sunday morning as soon as Nopi would open at ten, and we were behind the doors when they still remained unshakeably closed, even despite the tugs from the more greedy and optimistic customers.Continue Reading…

My love affair with Brixton didn’t burst into flames at the first sight: the first time a set my foot in Brixton, it had suddenly got rainy and gloomy, whereas Chiswick, where I had just come from flat hunting, had been sunny, cheery, cosy and the truth to be told, just perfect for some long term future planning.

But life has its mysterious ways of teaching us about world, or, as in this case, about areas in London, and I ended up renting a flat from Brixton after all: a cute and cosy little studio for my husband and me to start our new adventures.